Personal Trainer | Business Owner | Opinionated Fitness Guru

Month: February 2019

The great debate – treadmill walking and running versus outside. Well, you can tell by the title, I have my own clear winner. But, if you are still reading past the headline, I bet you want to know more…you want to know the WHY.

In a nutshell, when you run or walk outside, the muscles of the leg have to propel you forward. When you run or walk on a treadmill, the muscles of your leg have to catch you as you fall forward. So even though it looks like the same exercise, they are actually two different exercises using different muscles.

When you are on a treadmill, the floor is moving under your feet. With each stride your body is hitting this moving surface and getting pushed into a forward motion. Your opposite leg then has to get out in front of you and hit the treadmill before you fall forward. So with each stride you are literally just catching yourself from falling instead of running forward.

Outside, the ground is stable, so your foot has to push against that stable surface and push you forward. For one, this takes a lot more strength and muscle activation to do than running on a treadmill so you will actually burn more calories and get a better workout. Secondly, and my favorite part, is that it is safer on your body. By pushing yourself forward, you are using your body the way it was designed to be used, as well as using all the muscles of the back of the leg to help counteract the effects from all your sitting time. Total win.

When we go around catching ourselves from falling instead of propelling ourselves forward, we put a lot of stress on our hip, knee, and ankle joints. Not to mention the load we put on our feet. This extra load leads to some of the most common aches and pains among runners – plantar fasciitis, hamstring tendinopathy, and runner’s knee just to mention a few. Where as running (correctly, more on that below) outside can actually help strengthen some of the most commonly weak postural muscles in the body.

So you are now convinced to take your run outside. Fantastic! Just a quick word…It is also possible to do the “fall and catch” outside as well. This usually occurs because the mobility in our hips and ankles restricts our body’s ability to move our legs in the appropriate way. So make sure you spend time opening up your hips (try these hip openers) and your calves. In fact, you can start right now with the exercise below!

I know I know. You are probably sick of me talking about the thoracic spine, but I can’t help myself. A few months back, I talked about the thoracic spine in my post “Exercises for a Tight Neck and Shoulders“. Today, I want to dive a little deeper and talk about the whole spine and the importance of movement and fluidity especially in the thoracic spine.

For an array of reasons, your spine needs to move fluidly. Proper movement in your spine not only allows you to move properly and avoid injury, but it also helps nourish the discs in your spine and move cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to and from your brain. Today, due to high levels of stress, constant sitting, and working on computers, our spines do not get a lot of chances to move forward, back, side-to-side, and in rotation. The place this shows up the most, is in the thoracic spine.

The thoracic spine is the the middle portion of your spine. The spine should move like a snake – flexible but strong. Imagine you are holding a snake (I know it’s gross, but it’s just pretend), if you hold onto the center of the snake, his head and tail are going to move like crazy! The same thing happens to your back. When we lose movement in our thoracic spines, our necks and low backs become hyper-mobile. This excess of movement puts huge forces on our vulnerable discs and vertebrae and can lead to muscle soreness, nerve pain, and bulging discs.

So, now that I have scared you into moving your spine (I am totally proud of that by the way), let’s give you something you can actually use to help yourself. Below you will find videos to move your thoracic spine in 3 different ways – flexion and extension, lateral movement, and rotation. Do the whole set or pick one from each movement and get your mid-back moving!

Thoracic Mobilization – Flexion/Extension

Thoracic Mobilization – Lateral Shift

Thoracic Mobilization – Rotation

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